Ghost Ship Found

By Marcin Jamkowski

Photographs by Christoph Gerigk

Scholz illuminates the door to Steuben's bridge as well as nets left behind by almost 60 years of fishing activity. Photographer Gerigk spent several hair-raising minutes tangled in one of these nets. With barely enough air for 25 minutes at the wreck and another hour and 40 minutes needed for a slow return to the surface, such snags could prove fatal for divers. "I shot this photo only minutes after getting free," he says, "as a personal souvenir."

The Baltic
Sea was as gray as storm clouds when the four of us jumped into the water. We
each had several tanks filled with different mixtures of gases for breathing at
depths up to 235 feet (72 meters)—more than twice as deep as conventional
scuba diving. The waves kicked us around as we swam, so when we reached the
marker buoy, we submerged as quickly as possible, and the weight of our
equipment seemed to lighten.

We were on
our way to examine the recently discovered remains of Steuben, a German ship sunk during World War II
with the loss of perhaps 4,500 lives—three times the death toll of Titanic. A private Swedish team and later the
Polish Navy had both scanned the ghostly wreck with sonar. But only a handful
of divers had seen it since it was hit by two torpedoes from a Soviet submarine
on February 10, 1945.

By the time
we reached 70 feet (20 meters), the sea was as dark as night: Even with our
powerful underwater lights we could see nothing but the dive line from the buoy
going down. The deeper we went, the gloomier it felt. Finally at 150 feet (46
meters) a huge shape emerged from the darkness—difficult to recognize at
first because it was resting on its side. But as we swam closer, I made out the
outline of the gracious ship's hull, crowned with an elegant railing and
straight rows of portholes.

Built in
1923, Steuben had
been converted in 1944 to transport wounded soldiers. Armed with antiaircraft
guns, the 550-foot-long vessel was jammed with more than 5,000 people,
including at least 1,000 civilian refugees, when it was attacked 40 miles off
the German coast. Only 659 people were rescued from the icy water.

Thoughts of
the terrible scenes from 60 years ago rushed through my head as I swam past the
promenade deck. I imagined the crowd of people squeezed into the narrow
passageways, struggling to reach the stern deck in time to find a raft or a
boat. When I peeked inside through the large, smashed windows, what surprised
me most was the complete emptiness: no ship equipment, no baggage thrown around,
nothing. The power of the water surging through the decks must have been so
tremendous that it swept away everything, leaving just naked walls.

Past the
promenade deck I saw the entrance to the concert halls that had been packed
with wounded German soldiers, and I knew that inside there must be the remains
of thousands of them. I remembered what Polish Navy officers had told me after
they'd investigated the wreck in late May 2004. They'd taken a good look at the
sea bottom with a remotely operated vehicle and found the entire area around
the wreck "covered with human remains, skulls, and bones."

We didn't
swim into the ship. Not only because it was dangerous—we might get
entangled and run out of air before we could get free—but also because we
believed this underwater tomb deserved respect. It was easy to imagine the
dramas that had taken place here, having heard the stories myself from some of
the last living survivors. Despite what the Nazis had done to my country, I had
tears in my eyes as I listened.

Early winter
of 1944 was surprisingly warm in East Prussia, a German province squeezed
between the U.S.S.R. and Nazi-occupied Poland. Muddy roads had prevented
Stalin's tanks from renewing the offensive that had been interrupted a few
months earlier. The Soviet commanders were just waiting for a little frost on
the ground to smash through the ramshackle defense lines that German civilians
had hastily erected.

The frost
arrived in the middle of January, and an avalanche of 200 Soviet divisions rushed
forward along the eastern front. The dwindling armies of the Third Reich could
not stop them, the front line shattered, and soon the roads were filled with
retreating German soldiers. Ivan's coming! they told civilians. Run!

German
residents knew all too well what an encounter with the incoming Soviet Army
could mean, having heard the story of Nemmersdorf (Mayakovskoye), a village in
East Prussia overrun by the Soviets the previous autumn. There the Red Army had
taken bloody revenge for three years of suffering caused by the German invasion
of Russia. After seizing the village, the soldiers had first raped all women,
regardless of age, then had crucified them on doors of barns and houses. Men
and children had been clubbed to death, shot, or run over with tanks. When
Germans later retook the village, they invited reporters from neutral
countries—Sweden, Switzerland, and Spain—to see what the Red Army
had done. German theaters were soon showing a horrifying newsreel filmed in the
village.

Near the end
of January, Helene Sichelschmidt, a 19-year-old kindergarten teacher, was
working at her school in Aweyden (Nawiady) when fleeing German soldiers brought
wounded to the courtyard.

"They were
exhausted from the fight and frightened," she remembers. "They warned us that
the Russians had surrounded East Prussia and that it was time for us to run
away." Together with Marti Gleich, a friend from work, Sichelschmidt decided to
escape, taking only a small suitcase she had with her at school.

The two young
women found the roads jammed with an endless river of refugees. Dodging
strafing runs by Soviet planes, the pair spent nights in abandoned homes or in
car wrecks on the road. After two weeks of wandering in the snow, sometimes on
foot, they were finally transported in a fishing boat taking soldiers across
Frisches Haff (Vislinkiy Zaliv) to the Baltic port of Pillau (Baltiysk). The
town had a depressing look. Bombed a few days earlier, it was full of wounded
from the eastern front. Refugees at one point outnumbered inhabitants by four
to one.

"The port was
full of soldiers in bandages soaked with blood, many lying on stretchers
outdoors," Sichelschmidt says. "They asked for water, for help. There were also
many refugees like us looking for a chance to get on a ship."

In the middle
of January, Germany had begun Operation Hannibal, a naval withdrawal that grew
to include civilians in the largest maritime evacuation in history. Over a
period of four months nearly 1,100 German ships would transport some 2.4
million people to safety across the Baltic Sea. Every sort of ship would sail
west from Pillau, Danzig (Gdańsk), Gotenhafen (Gdynia), Zoppot (Sopot) and
Hel: ocean liners, naval vessels, merchant ships hauling refugees in cargo bays
formerly used for iron ore, even small fishing boats. The main staging point
for refugees was Pillau; from that port alone 441,000 people would be
transported to Germany proper.